


A Hunter's Story

by ScorpioDarkMoon



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Grief/Mourning, Short, Short One Shot, Survivor Guilt, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 19:09:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10556206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScorpioDarkMoon/pseuds/ScorpioDarkMoon
Summary: She knew this path, knew it well. As the first memory she had in this life it had been burned into her mind like a brand, the day her ghost had brought her back from the dead. Every detail remained vividly clear in her mind’s eye. The grey morning sky, the terrible nightmarish screams of the Fallen, dust in the air. She remembered fighting through what then felt like a sea of beasts, old forgotten battle instincts kicking in long before she remembered where they came from. Her instinct to survive left little room to wonder about the past then.But it was her past that brought her here now.





	

“Where are we going?” The ghost questioned as they passed yet another beacon. To his displeasure and irritation the young awoken huntress didn’t reply. Silently she moved through the ruined building, slipping past a group of Fallen squabbling over an abandoned Sparrow. On any other day she might have stopped to dispatch them at a distance. But she was alone, without a fellow guardian to cover her, in enemy territory she couldn’t afford to start a fight. Guardians weren’t invincible, a truth she knew well. 

But far more importantly she was here for only one reason and it was not to fight the darkness.

Leaving the Fallen to split their find across each other, she slipped on through the building into the divide. She knew this path, knew it well. As the first memory she had in this life it had been burned into her mind like a brand, the day her ghost had brought her back from the dead. Every detail remained vividly clear in her mind’s eye. The grey morning sky, the terrible nightmarish screams of the Fallen, dust in the air. She remembered fighting through what then felt like a sea of beasts, old forgotten battle instincts kicking in long before she remembered where they came from. Her instinct to survive left little room to wonder about the past then. 

But it was her past that brought her here now.

A cold howling wind blew through the broken Cosmodrome, like the long-forgotten voices of the millions of people that had perished during the collapse. The hunter thought little of it as she crept through tall dry grass, using it only to cover the sounds of her footsteps. More fallen were here, crawling across the decimated landscape, scavenging. If they knew a guardian crept so close they’d signal the rest. The hunter wouldn’t be able to handle an army.

As they snuck around broken buildings and camps of Fallen her ghost pulsed just a little faster, turning at every sound nervously. He had no choice but to follow his guardian into whatever hell hole she wished that didn’t mean he had to like it or stay silent. As soon as they slipped through a crack in the great wall he moved out ahead of her, trying to see into her face from under the cowl of her hood. “Keth we shouldn’t be here alone, this is a bad idea.”

The hunter didn’t say anything in reply she simply reloaded her weapon. 

Her ghost let out a sound like a sigh. A terrible screech echoed through the tunnel bringing him whirling around fearfully. He disappeared from sight and slipped back into the hunter, reluctant to be out in the open so deep in Fallen territory. Keth felt him at the center of her chest and the heat of his light warmed her own. 

He would never know how comforting that was for the awoken. 

Her boots sloshed through ankle deep putrid, chemical filled water though she had no fear of being heard. The ever constant screams of fallen outside were replaced by the whir of old and dying engines. It seemed to be safer here but she knew better where this tunnel led, right into the depths of a Fallen nest. Employing every ounce of her hunter training she came up to a doorway and looked inside to spy on the aliens standing around in the next room. A Vandal stood at the center of a group of Dregs barking out orders in their strange tongue. 

Under the cover of this distraction Keth slipped into the room and made her way around the perimeter, one eye trained on the group. None turned to find her; none even knew she was only a few short feet away. Without incident she moved through the next doorway and proceeded across a metal bridge in a rush. It was too open for her. Once on the other side and safely in a deserted hall she relaxed only fractionally. 

It was then that she felt her ghost quivering inside her chest, scared of the Fallen that surrounded them. The guardian took pity on him. “I remembered.” She murmured quietly, passing through an exceptionally dark room, walking toward a door on the far side. 

“You… you remembered?” he asked reappearing at her shoulder as she paused just inside the bright doorway. 

“How I got here, why I was here.” She replied scanning the field in front of the door. A broken forgotten highway sped away to either side of her. The black top cracked to oblivion, rusted cars sitting where they had been abandoned, melted over the years of decay. In the far distance she could see a range of mountains, jagged and unforgiving. Beyond that the dark midnight sky lit with stars shone brightly, a half-moon lingering with them. Though she couldn’t see it in the shadow of the earth she knew that it bore the scars of the collapse as much as the scene before her. 

Her ghost glided through the air beside her as she stepped down the crumbling stairs to the black top, slowly picking her way through the rust and metal. “I didn’t know… I’ve never heard of a guardian remembering their previous lives.”

“It’s not uncommon.” She said without looking at him, dropping her eyes to the ground. She had little hope of picking up her trial from so long ago even if the black top had provided prints. Fallen would have no doubt trampled all over them by now. “When I started remembering I asked the Speaker, he told me that many guardians remember fragments from their lives, particularly if those fragments are traumatic or powerful.”

“How much do you remember?” he asked, moving around to face her again in an effort to force her to stop and talk to him. 

She looked at him with a heavy expression, her gold glowing eyes pained. “Show me where you found me and I’ll explain.” 

He had spent a long enough time with Keth to know her moods and how to handle them. This time he slid back and dutifully turned around. “It’s close, we should hurry before those Fallen realize they let a guardian slip by.” 

Keth glanced over her shoulder back toward the door before following her ghost on a path she recognized all too well. “It must have been centuries ago. Some of these cars still had traces of paint left on them, the bones weren’t quite as dry and the air didn’t smell so ….” She trialed off, grimacing in on a skeleton with a hole in its skull still sitting at the wheel as if waiting for the years old traffic to finally move. 

Her ghost scanned the area with his eye, pausing now and again to carefully observe a particular spot. It had apparently been a long time for him as well since he first found her. “What happened, Keth? Why did you bring us all the way out here to your – why?”

“Because I left … someone behind.” She answered, pausing once again to look up toward the sky. 

“Found it.” her ghost called bringing her to his side in a silent instant.

She knelt in the dirt, gently touching the ground he indicated. A dark, dull red stain still lingered on the ground and somehow it felt warm to the guardian’s touch. “Thank you.” She whispered hoarsely, rising and turning on the spot to look around. “It wasn’t too far; I remember I was only inches away before….” With those words lingering in the air she started walking again, climbing over a pair of cars that sat melted together by the blast of a powerful attack. Between them the skeleton and armor of a Fallen Dreg still sat, its mouth hung agape in its final moments of pain.

Her ghost lingered there for a moment, scanning the spot out of curiosity. “A Warlock did this.” he announced with a little surprise.

“yes.” Once again Keth paused, staring down at a particular spot in front of her. 

The little geometric machine glided to her, coming to rest at her shoulder. “You knew that would be there.”

“yes.” Kneeling, the hunter pulled back her hood, reaching down to shove aside the centuries of dirt that had accumulated since that fateful day. “We came out here searching for something to add to the archives. It should have been simple, easy, we had no idea that the Fallen had set up their command so close.” With every word she spoke she pushed aside more and more dirt, digging down until she found the road beneath. When her fingers brushed the little object, she hesitated, her heart thudding in her ears making it harder to hear anything. 

“We?” the ghost remained a foot back, watching her dig at a distance, unwilling to intrude where he might not be wanted.

“yes.” That simple reply hung the air while she bent forward with both her hands. When she straightened, and leaned back on her legs she held gently in her hands, a dead ghost.

At the sight of it her own ghost slid quickly back, blinking rapidly with surprise. “A ghost… here? How did I not notice before?”

“Because he’s been dark for a long time.” Keth put the ghost in her lap and gingerly held it there while she reached into the hole. This time she removed a band, dark blue and black, with the shape of a black star at its center. With it came the fragments of a robe, bits of metal raining down into the grave. “I’m sorry old friend, I’m sorry I couldn’t get to you.”

Now her ghost came forward fully, peering into the dirt to avoid looking at his dead kin, or maybe the dead ghost looked too much like him. “Who was he?” he asked, examining the band Keth turned over in her hand.

“He didn’t care for names, or that’s what his ghost told me.” She replied, placing the metal ring around the ghost in her lap and dropping her head to look at them together. “He was an Exo, a powerful Warlock, a good guardian. He … saved me from the reef when I was a child.” 

“Saved you?”

“I was a slave, or might as well have been. When he arrived on the reef seeking aid from the Awoken he brought me back with him. Neither of us chose things to end up that way but….” Shrugging she took a piece of tattered robe and carefully wrapped the dead ghost in it. “When I lived at the tower I worked with the Cryptarchs and when someone needed a historian or dycrypter out in the field I was one of those few that got sent along. This Exo always wanted me to come.”

“You lived at the tower….” her ghost murmured in astonishment looking back down at the now wrapped ghost. “Do you remember what it was like? What the city was like?”

“Not really, flashes nothing much different from what it’s like now.” With a huff she got to her feet, holding the remains of her friend gently in her hand. “We came out here, a simple scanning patrol. Things were quiet while his ghost and I worked, he never spoke a word but when he told me to run I knew it was too late.” Her heart gave a twinge of pain in her chest and she put a hand to it, tracing that scar subconsciously. “The Fallen had us surrounded before we even realized we were being attacked. He told me to run and I tried but when I looked back and saw him surrounded I couldn’t just leave. I returned to fight, to do what I could but it didn’t matter. He unleashed everything he had on the Fallen but there were too many. They overwhelmed him and I watched helplessly as the Vandal brought his sword through his chest.” 

She stopped then leaning heavily against the nearest car, holding the ghost and the bond tightly to her chest. The pain of the memory felt so raw that tears began to fall for the first time in her second life, tears of anguish. Her ghost came forward, his light faltering a little in the wake of her hurt. “You don’t have to continue.” He said gently. “It’s all right.”

“No, I need to say this.” taking a long breath to steady herself she tilted her head back to look at the sky. “I tried to reach him while his ghost made to revive him but the very same Vandal saw me coming. He blocked me, grabbed me by the hair and buried the same blade, still dripping with the Guardian’s blood, into my chest, just below my heart. While I lay there, bleeding to death I watched him grab the ghost and crush him….” her voice wavered again and in an effort to stop it she swallowed hard.

“I’m sorry.” Her ghost said dropping his gaze in sympathy.

“Let me ask you something.”

“Anything.”

The hunter brought her eyes back to him and waited until he looked her in the face before asking, “Why did you choose me? Why didn’t you choose him?”

A deep resounding silence followed her question. Her ghost hovered in the air silently looking back into her intense gold eyes, wavering on what to say. At last he lowered himself just a little, dropping below her eye leech to answer. “I don’t know why. I was born with all the knowledge I could possibly need, with the faint inclination of what my guardian would be. The Traveler makes each ghost for a specific guardian, yes, we can revive a new guardian if ours falls but we never share the same bond. More importantly a guardian can only be revived by one ghost.” 

“So, you came looking for me, the traveler chose me instead of choosing to revive him again.” Her hand tightened ever so much on the ghost of her dead friend while her other grasped his bond. “I didn’t want this; I never wanted to be a guardian. He, the Traveler should have brought back the Exo not me. He could have done so much more, I’m nothing compared to him.” 

“That isn’t true Keth.” Her ghost said urgently, flying closer to her face to force her to look at him again. “You’ve done so much in the short time I’ve known you, you’ve fought off hordes of Fallen, killed a Kell, forged through the center of the Hive on the moon. Defended a patrol against an onslaught of Vex, you’ve faced a Cabal legion and lived. You’re just as much the guardian as he was.”

“But I’m not.” her voice shook, broke up in her throat as she talked, the guilt and pain eating away at her insides. “He was incredible, strong, gentle. He’d destroy an entire Fallen drop ship without so much as firing a shot; whole armies would turn and run when he showed them his full power. He could have found a way to bring back the traveler, to destroy the darkness. I could never do that.”

“It takes more than one person to fight a war Keth, you know that, and I’m sure he did too.” He glided down to the hand that held the other ghost and rested over the top of it, staring up at her. “Do you think he felt any different than you when he was first revived? He awoke to a world he didn’t recognize with no familiar faces, barely a city to defend, and only one purpose. Do you think he didn’t spend nights thinking about his old life, wishing that the traveler and his ghost had chosen a different guardian to bring back? He felt just as much survivor’s guilt as you do, more even if he had died during the collapse. If you want to do him any honor, if you want to make up for this you have to fight, you have to do what he didn’t have time to. You have to be the guardian you saw in him.”

Keth sat there and allowed her ghost’s words to sink in. after several long minutes she felt her chest relax and let out a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding. Chuckling a little under her breath she smiled down at him. “You know, for a little light you’re good at this.”

He chuckled mechanically and pulled away, hovering in the air at her eye leech. “Do you want to stay and look for more of his remains?”

Shaking her head, she shoved off the car and pulled her hood back over her face. “No, we’ve been here too long there’ll be Fallen on us before we know it. Call the ship.”

“right.” he turned away from her and expanded outward into his large orb of light, pulsing to call their ship down to them.

As Keth watched him her mind’s eye strayed back to all those years ago, that last memory of her first life. She lay in the dust, blood filling her lungs, Fallen swarming around them in excitement at having successfully killed a guardian. One of her hands remained outstretched in the dirt, reaching toward the warlock whose eyes were slowly diming. They locked gazes, both dying on the forgotten highway, surrounded by their enemy, and he uttered his final word.

“live.” She murmured aloud.

“What?” her ghost looked at her confused. 

“His last word, one of his only words to me … live.” She clarified in a murmur, gazing down at the spot where she had found his ghost, where he had died. 

As their ship came into view over the horizon her ghost returned to normal and turned to her. “Maybe the traveler heard him.”

“maybe.” The ship came to a stop just over her head, hovering with almost entirely silent engines. “Let’s go back to the tower, let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> So it's the middle of the day, I should be working, or studying or something more productive instead I'm writing which frankly is the only thing that makes me happy right now. 
> 
> I may do more with Keth. She's my official Destiny character. With Destiny two coming out in September I may be writing a few of her adventures down. We'll see.


End file.
